Berkeleyan

PublicationsClosely Watched Films: An Introduction to the Art of Narrative Film TechniqueBy Marilyn Fabe

In Closely Watched Films, Marilyn Fabe, a lecturer in the department of film studies, looks at the work of 14 directors whose careers span the nearly 100-year history of narrative film. The author offers a shot-by-shot analysis of key films, beginning with D.W. Griffith’s 1915 silent classic The Birth of a Nation and concluding with Mike Figgis’s Timecode (2000), which the filmmaker shot using digital video. In an accessible style Fabe provides historical context for each film, illustrates key terms and techniques, and discusses the medium’s milestones, including Soviet montage, realism and expression, classical and modern sound theory, the classic Hollywood film, Italian neorealism, the French New Wave, auteur theory, modernism and postmodernism, political cinema, feminist film theory and practice, and narrative experiments in digital media.